Human resources and recruiting communities continually seek a competitive edge and more actionable information. From a recruiting perspective, “passive candidates” are individuals who are top performers, currently employed, and not actively (or explicitly) seeking a new role; they are also considered the most valuable and the hardest to recruit. Finding a passive candidate immediately before she becomes an “active candidate”—i.e., a candidate who is actively and explicitly pursuing job opportunities —represents the best of both worlds: the individual is as amenable to new opportunities as a passive candidate, but is not as difficult to recruit. Further, for employers, the ability to identify individuals who are about to become active candidates on the open job market provides an opportunity to intervene in order to retain top performers. (In a recruiting context, candidates may also be referred to as “contacts.”)
Unfortunately, the ability to identify promising candidates (particularly those about to transition into active job-seeking) is very limited both for recruiters and employers. Employees' individual dissatisfactions reach the ears of management only sporadically and unpredictably, and those who broadcast their unhappiness are rarely the ones a company would strive to retain. Recruiters must generally rely on coarse indicators such as a candidate's level of responsibility and longevity with his current employer—indicators that correlate weakly with the candidate's likely interest level in new opportunities.